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Developing Virtue: Some Conceptual Issues

For Virtue and its Development Conference, Notre Dame May 19-22, 2014

Christine Swanton.

This paper addresses a relatively unexplored issue in virtue ethics: what is the relation between the virtues and desirable traits or sensitivities of those whose virtue is in the process of developing? Similar questions apply to other relatively unexplored issues: what is the relationship between the virtues and the excellences and duties appropriate to roles? What is the relationship between the virtues and narrative excellences pertaining to the structure of an individual life?

Clearly immature agents do not possess mature virtue but does it make sense to think that, as some do, children can nonetheless be virtuous? If there is a sense in which children can be virtuous, and I shall argue that there is such a sense, what is that sense? And what is the relationship between the way children are virtuous and mature virtue? These are the questions explored in this paper.

(i) Aristotelian Virtue.

In order to discuss the relation between virtue and desirable traits in the young we need to discuss the notion of virtue in the mature. For virtue ethical orthodoxy virtue just is mature virtue. However there are many possible conceptions of mature virtue the most prominent of which is that of Aristotle. For him virtue proper is understood as arte kuria or full virtue. That notion has five features all of which might be disputed by theorists of mature virtue. These are

(1) Genuine virtue just is full virtue. There is no such thing as virtue in the immature.

This claim is denied by those who believe that virtue is relative to stage of life including the immature stages: a view that is explored and defended below.

(2) Full virtue for Aristotle requires practical wisdom. To possess practical wisdom in turn one needs to be mature; for practical wisdom demands both experience and emotional intelligence. Hence (1) above is true.

What is practical wisdom? Practical wisdom requires a sophisticated sensitivity as well as the knowledge of experience, but as Hursthouse points out,[footnoteRef:1] the knowledge of the virtuous agent need not be infallible or encyclopaedic. Agents of full virtue are after all human; they have limited perspective due to their age, gender and cultural and historical location, and the narrative particularities of their lives; furthermore they cannot be expert in all fields. As a result, an agent with full virtue requires the dialogic virtues to make up for the shortfall in her knowledge and her perspectival limitations. She also needs these to participate in collective decision making. [1: In Rosalind Hursthouse Practical Wisdom: A Mundane Account, Proceedings of The Aristotelian Society 106 (2006): 285-309. ]

Not all virtue theorists agree that mature virtue requires practical wisdom. Dissenters are called Soft as opposed to Hard by Daniel Russell.[footnoteRef:2] A Soft virtue ethicist is Slote[footnoteRef:3] for whom virtue essentially consists of admirable motivation, but motivation may be admirable without being informed by practical wisdom according to Slote. [2: Daniel C. Russell Practical Intelligence and the Virtues (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2009).] [3: Michael Slote Morals from Motives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001) ]

(3) The notion of full virtue presupposes a human telos which defines ends proper to human beings. However one may have a theory of mature virtue such as that of Julia Driver[footnoteRef:4] which does not presuppose a teleological (as opposed to say consequentialist) framework. [4: Julia Driver Uneasy Virtue (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001)]

(4) The Aristotelian notion of full virtue not only presupposes a teleological framework of ethics but a conception of what it is to be good qua human being. More specifically full virtue is virtue possessed by an agent qua human being as opposed to agent qua artist or business executive. Furthermore it is fundamentally the realization of ones telos qua human being to which human beings aspire, or should aspire.

What is it to be good qua human being? To answer this question, consider this quote from Alasdair MacIntyre:

Aristotle takes it as a starting-point for ethical enquiry that the relationship of 'man' to 'living well' is analogous to that of 'harpist' to 'playing the harp well' (Nicomachean Ethics, 1095a 16). But the use of 'man' as a functional concept is far older than Aristotle and it does not initially derive from Aristotle's metaphysical biology. It is rooted in the forms of social life to which the theorists of the classical tradition give expression. For according to that tradition to be a man is to fill a set of roles each of which has its own point and purpose: member of a family, citizen, soldier, philosopher, servant of God. It is only when man is thought of as an individual prior to and apart from all roles that 'man' ceases to be a functional concept.[footnoteRef:5] [5: Alasdair MacIntyre After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (1981) 3rd ed. 2007 (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press)]

Lurking here are three possible conceptions of goodness qua human being. These are:

(a) Goodness qua human being where a human being is thought of as an individual prior to and apart from all roles, a conception wholly derived from metaphysical biology.

(b) Goodness qua human being where a human being is thought of as an individual who is wholly defined by filling a set of roles each of which has its own point and purpose. Goodness qua human is thus understood wholly in terms of how well he has integrated all the various roles in that set.

Here the norms of integration are governed by some conception of goodness qua individual human life, and these norms may be (i) relatively individualist (such as narrative virtue pertaining to how the life hangs together), or (ii) relatively collectivist such as degree of contribution to overall societal good).

(c) Goodness qua human being where such goodness integrates (i) species wide conceptions of goodness qua human (what Philippa Foot calls natural goodness) and (ii) a more local conception of goodness that is relative to the roles filled by the individual in his local community.

The tensions between aspects of goodness within (c) are not merely the tensions inherent in multiple role occupation; they include also the tensions between excellence in (worthwhile) roles and a more role independent conception of goodness qua human. Such tension, claims MacIntyre, is inherent in Aristotles own conception of the telos of an individual human being. He says:

Hence Aristotle's ethics, expounded as he expounds it, presupposes his metaphysical biology. Aristotle thus sets himself the task of giving an account of the good which is at once local and particular - located in and partially defined by the characteristics of the polis - and yet also cosmic and universal. The tension between these poles is felt throughout the argument of the Ethics.[footnoteRef:6] [6: After Virtue, 148. See also Julia Annas My Station and its Duties: Ideals and the Social Embeddedness of Virtue Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Vol. 102, 1, (2002), 109-123. This is the conception of virtue Annas finds in the Stoics and F.H. Bradley. ]

Full virtue on this view requires that morality though rooted in the social and family life you have cannot be exhausted by it for you as a fully virtuous agent cannot help but be aware that your community is imperfect[footnoteRef:7] [7: Annas, 122.]

(5) Full virtue presupposes that there is a state of perfection to which humans can aspire.

However one can believe that there are norms of development and maturity for human beings, norms which constrain correct conceptions of mature virtue, without believing in any notion of perfection. One can even believe in (some conception of) (4), that there is goodness qua human teleologically understood, without believing that there is a norm of perfection. How can this be?

Consider Daniel Russells view that virtue is both a satis and a model concept. He claims rightly that it is a mistake to suppose that the idea that one need only be virtuous enough to be virtuous is an alternative to thinking of the virtues in terms of ideal models. [footnoteRef:8]However it does not follow from this view that (as Russell thinks) thinking of virtue in terms of ideals is required on account of the very sort of satis concept that virtue is.[footnoteRef:9] What is necessary for the notion that virtue is a satis concept is that there are norms of improvement and development in virtue. These norms need not suppose a model of ideal virtuousness that both sets the top end of the scale and gives meaning to the idea that a particular agent occupies a certain level on that scale.[footnoteRef:10] On interpretations (b) and (c) of being good qua human there are multiple possible sets of worthwhile roles that could be filled by individual human beings all of which would result in completely different life narratives. Any such narrative may constitute a life good enough to be virtuous, and any such life would contain its own obstacles and tensions. They would be incomparable on any scale terminating in perfection. Many quite different and incomparable lives may be regarded as good or even admirable, without there being any coherent notion of a top end of a scale or an ideal. Of these good lives we could say: [8: Daniel Russell Practical Intelligence and the Virtues, 121.] [9: 121.] [10: 121.]

(i) Some lives are good enough to be called virtuous.

(ii) Some lives are better than the merely good


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